I read this article on the soccer fans of Seattle, Vancouver, and Portland, and how they've been bringing out the Cascadian flag. Well, guess what? Cascadia really does have its own flag! In fact, you can buy one!
The site where you can buy the flag defines Cascadia as the entire Pacific Northwest envisioned as a potentially independent nation. My definition in Spanner is considerably smaller, basically western Washington and Oregon combined with southwestern British Columbia, set apart as a sort of Indian reservation for liberals by the Conservative Revolutionary federal government, essentially the Cascadia of Ernest Callenbach's utopian novel Ecotopia without the California part that Callenbach was focused on.
But guess what? Even this "rump" Cascadia is still secessionist and rallies under the Douglas Fir flag a.k.a. "The Doug". That body of water in the northern part of the state, around which the urban heart of Cascadia nestles, is still called by Cascadians the Salish Sea. And the entire theme of "legal in Cascadia but not in America" just has to carry the implication of "Cascadia wants to be independent of the American Empire", and so do all those references to the Arab Spring and the Occupy Movement that I threw into the Third Revision last year as they happened. And what could Chapters 21-23, the last three chapters of Spanner Book 1, be about but Cascadia trying to be independent, with the Doug waving throughout the aspiring nation?
I slapped my forehead and cried out, "But of course!"
EDIT: It turns out Cascadia has a Native American name as well: Chinook Illahee. And Illahee just happens to be the name of a neighbourhood in Bremerton, come to think of it...
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